day 4: March 10, 2010
Actually I got it for a bit cheaper than I thought I would; but the price of the film makes up for it.
These days I am shooting digitally with a Canon 400D and various lenses (including the sweet Diana adapter which converts my DSLR into a nearly-lomographic creature).
And now I have the Instax to add to my collection.
I also have a Pentax 'something-or-other' (film semi-automatic-kinda-digital-thingy) which my father gave me, but for the life of me I cannot make it produce a single picture.
A mystery...
Actually, I was contemplating why I had so many different cameras and why I prefer using different ones at different times. My musings lead me down some interesting paths.
When one shoots with a DSLR you are investing in a moment that may or may not have value. Depending on how you shoot you may at any point choose to erase or even edit your picture later on. If you are shooting snapshot style pictures then with your digital camera you can capture every moment and decide later on which ones are the memories you want to keep and which are the ones you can happily relegate to their place in the recycle bin. Depending on what you are shooting, some memories may even need a little tweaking; a wrinkle eased out here and there; a spot or blemish smoothed over.
'Lomo' cameras (toy cameras, refurbished, hyper-promoted and released as fashion items) offer a different kind of appeal. There is no deleting analog film; no editing these babies (at least not before you have developed and scanned your film). Heck; there is hardly any focusing them. These cameras are free spirits - their pictures, heady with emotion and almost audible make even the most mundane locations seem an enviable place to have been.
The great thing about these cameras is that there is no way to remember everything you shot on a reel. So, you click and click away until, one day, while cranking your little camera's spool to the next frame it grinds to a halt signaling time to take the little canister to a lab and see what you got.
Developing film smells like alchemy to me. The excitement with which I receive my prints (digital prints on CD) and leaf (scroll) through them is really worth the effort of locating a photo-lab that still develops film.
So how does the Instax measure up?
Well I have found that there is a whole other dimension to shooting with this little camera. Suddenly I am plagued by a thousand thoughts before I can bring myself to snap the shot:
Is this picture worth it?
Is this the scene I want?
Will this picture measure up to the smiling, casual 'polaroid-dream' images that I see on TV and the internet?
Is this just going to waste money (about 60cents US per shot)?
Don't I rather want to save this one for later; a better shot; a more worthy memory?
It seems that my little Instax has introduced me to a photographic world of moral (and financial) dilemmas in which I am constantly asked to make decisions about the value of a moment, within that moment, and then, within the same moment to act on my decision. To snap or not to snap.
*click-----whurrrrr------60¢*
There must, I admit, be something said for the size of the final product. The Instax produces credit-card sized images that fit in your wallet or any business card holder. Something about that size is intimate. It somehow (probably also because of the price) seems to feel more precious and immediately affecting. Now, its not a case of taking a picture and remember the emotions of when you took it at some later date when you develop the reel; instead the first viewing of the image is one that you and other people around you can share only a few seconds after that moment that you thought was worth capturing. It does something to solidify the moment and heighten the emotions of in the memory. Maybe it is worth the 60¢ you just spent.
I feel as though, when I carry the misshapen, dumpy thing around with me (the Instax, that is), I breathe a slightly different air. My eyes are more alive in the moment. I am in the here and now, not gazing off at the potential of some scene for a photo-stitched, color enhanced, clone-brushed fate. With the Instax I am not worried that my spool will come back empty because I forgot to set my ISO/ASA setting correctly.
I am right here and now, debating whether I snap this little girl in the middle of the road with her umbrella; a sun caught in her hair, or not.
If you clicked the link (Fuji Instax Mini7S) at the top of the page you have probably noticed that this is not a camera that anyone who is really pretending to be interested in photography would like to be seen with. Its a photography-fashion nightmare. How could anyone who saw me with that thing take me seriously as a photographer afterwards? Perhaps that is a good thing though. It helps me be moderate when it comes to expenditures on film.
Well, thats enough rambling for today. Hope my thoughts will help you live in the moment too. With or without a camera there is no time more precious, or fleeting, than the moment you find yourself in right now.
Take it all in; feel it all; use it all up - and be thankful.
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